Games Day Germany 2012 preview



Next weekend (August 12th) another German Games Day will take place in Cologne. As i said before, I will not take part this year, the reasons for that are numerous yet unimportant. If you are still thinking about a trip there, or if you are painting the final brushstrokes on one of your entries, you might find the following links helpful.

• You can review the rules for the German GD here and here (in German only, sorry).
• Here you can check out who will do the painting demonstrations during the day.
• Go to the Bemalforum to check out a full list of international painters and their entries (go to the last page).
• If you like to visit the painters dinner on Saturday, check this out.
• A 360-version of the GD-miniature can be seen here.

Chris

Updating the blog

You might have already noticed that I added a few top-tabs that I will update as often as possible. To avoid long searches, I have put all my tutorials on the front page. In addition, I have put up a gallery of some of my miniatures.

Chris

WIP update #2: "Oficial de los Tercios Espanoles"

Here is a current update on my progress with the Spanish guy. I struggled painting the pants, mainly because I missunderstood the sculpt und painted it totally wrong. For the second try, I chose another colour and avoided hard lines. That part is not finished yet, I will add a few brown areas to make the shadow parts stand out a bit more. At the moment, the pants seem too flat. The pictures don't show it but I also painted some sort of  texture effect. I hope his comes out better in the next update.

The rest are minor things, I painted the red feather using a colour recipe I got from Picster, it makes painting red really easy. In addition, I painted the shirt collar. The pictures take away some of the contrast, looks too flat here.

Chris

Rise

Tutorial: how to pin a miniature on a base

You usually don't think that much about  the best way to pin a miniature on a base. Gamers don't do at all because of those fancy cases where each miniature is protected on its own. I started thinking about this after my first serious accident on my way to a painting workshop. I opened my miniature box and found a terrible battle ground. About 4 miniatures were heavily damaged because ONE miniature wasn't pinned correctly to the base. The collateral damage was breathtaking. ^_^

I spoke about this problem with Stephan Rath (derwish) and he smiled my problem away. He shared his way to pin a mini, and I would like to share this way with you today. It is very simple, not even worth the name "tutorial". 

The first step is to file the area that will be pinned. In most cases, this will be the foot. If the miniature is standing on both feet, take the time to pin both of them. Pinning one foot will be sufficient for your showcase at home but not for longer trips by car, train or plane. I usually drill a hole into the heel, as this point can't be seen from the front. Make sure that the hole is a little bit wider than the wire. Very simple so far.....

The wire you choose must be very hard, you should not be able to bend it with your fingers. Now comes the simple, yet very effective idea that Stephan came up with. In order to get a more stable pin, you need a huge, uneven surface that can be covered with glue. Your wire is neither huge, nor is it uneven. Therefore you need a small amount of tissue. If it sonsists of several layer, take only one. More layers will be too thick in the end.

Cover half of the wire with superglue and let it dry about 1 to 2 minutes. After that, surround the wire with one layer of tissue. The paper will make the glue dry instantly. Now you have am absorbent, very rough surface. Repeat this step with all pins you need for the miniature.

The rest should be clear. Put the wire with the prepared ending into your pinholes and let it dry. When you are pinning your miniature on some kind of armature for painting, like I always do, don't put tissue on the other ending of the wire. Instead, just glue it to your armature. When you have finished the mini, remove it and glue tissue to all pins, then glue it to the finished base.

From my experience, this way of pinning makes it almost impossible to remove a mini from the base without really wanting it.

Have fun and please let me know if this works for you.



Chris

WIP "Oficial de los Tercios Espanoles"

I spent way too much time on Diablo 3, so I decided to move my painting area to the living room. That was a very clever idea, because all of a sudden I paint again. As a Latorre-groupie, I once again have to point out, that his sculpts are a great pleasure to paint. I tried a lot of new things here, most of all blacklining. I always thought that this tecnique looks very artificial but I am satisfied with the result. Blacklining seems to add the impression of more and finer details, although thats not true at all. Another new thing I tried is the X21 flat base thingy from Tamiya. This also works fine for me, it makes your colours look dry and almost dusty. I am still stuggling with the right mixture of colour, water and X21 but it gets better and better.

The last thing I tried was to avoid using colours from the pot. That turned out to be a good decision on the finished cloth, as I can regulate the colour temperature of the lights and shadows way better. Usually, I use warm colours for the lights and cold colours for the shadows, this time I did the opposite and I like the outcome of it.

The finished parts took me 3 evenings so far.

Today, summer holidays started here in Bavaria. Expect updates on the blog an a more regular base the next 6 weeks.

Chris

Miniature review: Art Gironas "Oficial de los Tercios Espanoles"

Original boxart, painted by Fernando Ruiz Ceano

I told you about my love of Latorre sculpts. In my opinion, he perfectly understands what a painter wants. His work leaves enough space for creativity concerning light, focus and overall impression. This mini is a very good example for his work.

The figure comes in the typical Art Girona box, I didn't take a picture of that. On top is a picture showing the mini from the front and back, on the backside of that picture card are some notes about the uniform colour in Spanish. Inside the box, you will find a very well packed miniature. Here is a picture of all components.

Typical for Latorre sculpts, the main body comes in one part with the head already attached. Seperate parts are the left and right arm, a short sword and the hat.

The sculpt itself shows a rather tall man, Latorres latest sculpts seem to have become a little bit bigger. The casting quality is on a very high level, the minor mold lines can easily be removed.

Something I have not seen on Art Girona sculpts before is the already attached pin and the pinhole. Saves a few minutes of extra work.

The only big problem is a huge gap between the cloack und the body. I tried to attach the cloack in different angles to the mini but this is the best result I got. Some putty will hopefully do it.

Dry-fitting the mini shows the great job Latorre has done. A very unique pose with many details.

Chris





Just another base wip

Yesterday in the evening I felt it was time to do something productive concerning my hobby. After weeks, maybe months, I started to build a base that I was thinking about for quite some time. About two years ago, I bought a laser cut fence from fredericus-rex.de. Yesterday was the right time to build it up and see what it looks like. It is made of real wood and looks fantastic in my opinion. I hope you like the progress so far, the sclae is 54mm. I have already chosen a miniature for the scene that I will show you soon. This will be a fun project, nothing I will work on for decades.

Chris

Day-to-day life

The last couple of weeks have been very intense for me. The graduation of my pupils really kept me busy but the final results have been a great success and a real satisfaction for me. Therefore, and because of my ongoing unwillingness to paint miniatures, I took a break from my beloved hobby. I spent an enormous amount of time looking for error 37, just to notice that it was patched away. Holidays will start soon in Bavaria and I am considering to take up the brush once again. There will be at least one painters meeting with my friend Erik, maybe that will get me motivated.

As a result of my current aversion to painting minis, I decided not to take part in this years Games Day Germany. I made that decision about 6 weeks ago and it really helped me. At the moment I don't even think about any projects, plans and contests for the remaining year.

However, I finally had the courage to try something out, I always wanted to do. I bought a canvas, thought about a motive and started painting. The result can be seen here:

As a teenager I loved to read mangas. Today, only one is left, "Vagabond" by T. Inoue. This picture shows the main character Myamoto Musashi, a ronin and maybe the most famous samurai ever. The picture can be found in one of the mangas, I decided to paint it on canvas. This was so much fun (started yesterday, finished in about 5 hours) that I am thinking about doing much more paintings like this one.

Chris

Sin

I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me, and the cost is more than I can bear.

                                                                     Benjamin Martin



Chris